Overview of Management at Kudler Fine Foods, Virtual Organization
This text is about Kudler Fine Foods, a virtual organization, used for the purpose of give an overview of management. This will identify the primary functions of management through the description of whom is responsible for each function at Kudler, explaining how technology and internet are used nowadays and how affects the management of the organization, and illustrating each of the five forces from Porter’s Model.
Kathy Kudler was the VP of Marketing of a large defense contractor company and decided to leave her successful, but dull career to pursue a venture that would allow her to explore her passion for gourmet cooking. In June 18 1998, she opened the first store in La Jolla, at San Diego metropolitan area, in a 16.000 square feet building, to sell and explore domestic and imported foodstuffs. With the upcoming success, she opened the second store in 2000 at Del Mar and in 2003 at Encinitas.
The structure of her company counts with six departments: Finance and Accounting, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Operations, Legal and Information Technology. In her initial plan, she included an extra $50,000 to hire a consulting firm, Smith Systems Consulting, to assist in selecting and installing a Retail Enterprise Management System (REMS) and after that, hired in a yearly basis to maintain the REMS installed in all three stores. This system allows all six departments to have the necessary information for the daily jobs, helping the management team to have a complete overview of the company’s situation in the market and outside of it, with numbers and data used to make decisions quickly taken and develop strategies to have competitive advantage over prospect competitors.
To help her on daily tasks and management of the stores, she counts with the help of an Administrative Assistant, Arthur Stepka, who join the company in 1999, providing support, scheduling appointments, giving information to callers and assisting in the recruitment process. She counts
Kathy Kudler was the VP of Marketing of a large defense contractor company and decided to leave her successful, but dull career to pursue a venture that would allow her to explore her passion for gourmet cooking. In June 18 1998, she opened the first store in La Jolla, at San Diego metropolitan area, in a 16.000 square feet building, to sell and explore domestic and imported foodstuffs. With the upcoming success, she opened the second store in 2000 at Del Mar and in 2003 at Encinitas.
The structure of her company counts with six departments: Finance and Accounting, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Operations, Legal and Information Technology. In her initial plan, she included an extra $50,000 to hire a consulting firm, Smith Systems Consulting, to assist in selecting and installing a Retail Enterprise Management System (REMS) and after that, hired in a yearly basis to maintain the REMS installed in all three stores. This system allows all six departments to have the necessary information for the daily jobs, helping the management team to have a complete overview of the company’s situation in the market and outside of it, with numbers and data used to make decisions quickly taken and develop strategies to have competitive advantage over prospect competitors.
To help her on daily tasks and management of the stores, she counts with the help of an Administrative Assistant, Arthur Stepka, who join the company in 1999, providing support, scheduling appointments, giving information to callers and assisting in the recruitment process. She counts
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